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My most anticipated film of 2024 was Alien: Romulus (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) because the thought of director Fede Alvarez taking over the franchise was delicious. Alvarez’s notable previous films, Don’t breathe and the 2013 remake of evil Deadshould be treasured for their visual acumen, their unwavering creative depiction of gore, and their ability to play us like a piano – all valuable skills needed to make one Foreigner Film realizes its potential. And Romulus at least it does that. At best, however, it’s a wildly entertaining foray into familiar sci-fi/horror freakout territory, with engaging performances from Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, Civil War) and David Jonsson (Rye Lane) and Alvarez’ spirited direction. It was enough to gross $350 million in theaters worldwide and generated enough buzz to put it on par with its classic, genre-defining predecessors. Foreigner And Aliens – even if Romulus could sometimes be a bit much worship at her feet.

The essentials: The time is somewhere in between Foreigner And Aliens on the franchise timeline. The place is a miserable, godforsaken boulder planet with exactly zero hours of sunlight – the kind of damn place that makes you want to fucking go somewhere. That’s where Rain (Spaeny) lives and that’s where her predicament is. She toils in the mines. Her parents died from working in the mines. Her closest confidant is Andy the Anxious Android (Jonsson), a nervous and sensitive synthetic human. She consults with the local bureaucrat at the terminal behind the window because Rain has fulfilled her work quota and earned her transfer here, but she didn’t because the company – our old friends at Weyland-Yutani – just moved the goalposts . Corporations always do that in dystopias, right? There is always an alarming lack of oversight and regulation. But she is not without options. Her friends Tyler (Archie Renaux) and Kay (Isabela Merced) are far away Dora the explorer), Navarro (Aileen Wu) and Björn (Spike Fearn) have a plan: A decommissioned space station floats empty in orbit. Cryopods are on board. They’ll grab the pods, climb in, hit the snooze button, and fly ass away to a planet where there’s at least a tiny bit of hope.

Now I had no doubt that everything would go very well and as planned. A happy ending awaits you! They just have to enter the station, find the pods, then realize that the pods need pod juice, then find the pod juice, and to find the pod juice they have to go through a series of disturbing laboratory scenarios with computers and jars full of creepy things and something that what an evil egg hatchery looks like. It’s around this time that we learn that Björn is prejudiced against plastics and would happily push Andy into the vacuum if they didn’t need him to use his droid ways to get past computerized keyboards that control doors and the like. But does it matter if any of these characters have character? Because whatever is in the balls is probably going to get them as we laugh with goosebumps of joy? You don’t want to get too attached is what I’m trying to say here.

At least we feel something for the sisterly relationship between Rain and Andy. The bot is all she has. But there comes a point where Andy’s personality changes after a software upgrade is required to get through a particularly secure computer keyboard that controls a door. He gets a little smarter and a little stronger and a little more confident and a little cooler and we wonder: Is he more Bishop or more David or more Ash or what? To our complete and utter shock, things go badly and not at all according to plan when Rain and co. encounter facehuggers (hey, that’s them). Hugsso they’re as cuddly as ever!), classic franchise Xenomorphs (you know, with the hissing and crunching and the little toothy drool mouth inside the bigger toothy drool mouth) and a particularly disturbing encounter with the Uncanny Abyss. Oh, and there’s also a countdown to impact with siren lights and warning horns, as well as the Lady Computer Voice reminding everyone of their impending doom. Assuming, of course, that they don’t meet this demise in other ways first.

What films will it remind you of?: Alvarez takes some from him Don’t breathe Plot structure (a group of young adults wanders through a place they shouldn’t go) and crosses it with many, many things Foreigner And Aliens.

Performance worth seeing: Jonsson is the breakout star here, playing two different versions of a character – he goes from sweet and pathetic and endearing to disturbingly smart, although I’m not sure he’ll ever lose our allyship. His performance is another in the tradition of outstanding, memorably creepy android characterizations Foreigner Films, from Ian Holm to Michael Fassbender and Lance Henrikson.

Memorable dialogue: The last thing you need to hear from a once-cuddly “artificial human”: “I’m afraid I have a new policy.” – Andy

Gender and skin: None. Unless you want to count the facehuggers’ attempts to penetrate characters’ mouths with their disturbingly phallic egg-layer tentacle organs. Which no one does, even though the imagery is on the wrong side of suggestive.

Our opinion: Romulus begins inside a spaceship, with dashboard lights and screens and buttons and switches that click and whir and buzz and flick-flick-flick to life, setting the tone for a thoroughly tactile cinematic experience. Here Alvarez works with loving reverence Foreigner Franchise signatures that range from the battered, dirty, lived-in look of the settings and locations to the stomach-churning pus, mucus, and blood that inevitably drips and squirts everywhere when the titular creatures oh-so-disgustingly emerge from the unholy eggs and body cavities from which they emerged. CGI is used relatively rarely and everything feels shockingly real. Real enough to keep us in the moment and rooting for us – well, let’s be honest, our interest lies less in seeing one to three of these modestly developed characters at best survive this nightmare scenario, and more in how the creatures manage to practice diabolical evolutionary survival skills in their undeniably despicable pursuit of species conservation.

This is where Alvarez excels, be it through slight innovations in familiarities – e.g. B. by increasing the number to dozens of fleeting facehuggers instead of just two or three – or by putting together a few exciting third act scenes that take advantage of the series’ penchant for nail-biting action and tricky body horror. Alvarez’s direction is exceptional. The film looks great, is fast-paced, and inspires us just enough to invest in the story to draw us in and keep us in the moment.

At least for the most part at the moment, as numerous callbacks and Easter egg references to previous films in the series are recklessly installed to provide a service to fans. They are distracting but also easy to get around; Romulus is a far more enjoyable experience if you indulge in the gentler nostalgic comfort of familiar storylines (androids with questionable ethics, suspenseful suspense, horrors of childbirth) that Alvarez innovates just enough to make you feel like we’re not seeing quite the same things work through what you’ve always loved about these films. It would be disingenuous to say that the film really breaks new ground, but it’s damn good at creating the intoxicating effect of tension and relaxation. Not only does Alvarez keep a gasping franchise alive, but he also gives us a reason to feel invested in the rest of his life.

Our call: TOP THREE FOREIGNER MOVIES, RANKING: 1, Aliens (by less than the length of a small mouth popping out of a larger mouth). 2. Foreigner. 3. Alien: Romulus. (Honorable mention: the never-not-terrifying car abortion sequence in Prometheus.) Yes, Romulus is it good! And no, your attempts to reclaim yourself Alien 3 And Alien: Resurrection from the scrapyard are not convincing. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.